Goldfish Babies

[Kashta]

Thanks, Lupin.

OMG cam.. no I don't have a pond. And I have other goldies already planned for my 80 gallon tank. (Thanks, in part, to Flaringshutter and her brood.) With what I have already, my 110 gallon is technically overstocked as it is now. I'll have to move a few of those already within just a few months because the smaller goldies are going to grow that fast.

I was definitely not planning to breed any of these. What about that gorgeous red and white oranda I was going to get? What about those beautiful chocolate ones and the blue ones? I wanted a red cap... I wanted a black moor, too. Ugghhh, that darned Sprocket!! lmao.

If these fry babies don't die off on me within the first month, I'll just dump my plants from that tank and keep them there for a while until I can find new homes. I'll certainly offer them first to anyone here (much like Flaring did when she needed to rehome Sprocket and Alexei)... but after that, it'll be Craigslist or local feeder tanks, I'm afraid. Maybe I'll have to buy another large tank off Craigslist myself? I don't know at this point. Realistically, I'll be able to house one or two of the babies. After that, I'll just have to see how this goes. The mortality rate with fry and juvies is terrible, though. And I know many will turn out too badly deformed or undeveloped, so I'll have to do some selective culling so they won't suffer. Whatever happens, it should be real interesting.

Day 5 update on the eggs. It's not looking very good now for those that haven't hatched yet. I've had 9 more new hatchlings since my last update this morning. All of these today are so small and helpless looking, they just don't seem like they were ready to hatch yet... they just did anyway.

I must have a lot of comet babies.. the fry are really begining to look like shooting stars. The larger ones are getting slender as they absorb their yolk sacs and more are swimming around horizontally. The egg-like out of focus blobs at the bottom here are not eggs. Those are the newer fry who still have full yolk sacs. The remaining eggs are kept separate.

 

[paperdragon]

Congrats! It ought to be interesting to see what the fry look like as they grow.

 

[Flaringshutter]

Hooray for teenies!! I'm so excited for you! They're going to be gorgeous.

 

[Blizzanj]

Go sprocket! Go sprocket! I just read the story of him and the other day while looking through archives. It's such a great story, you are very lucky to have such an admirable fish. Congratulations on your new fry!

 

[H3D]

Congrats on the babies! :dance:

 

[Evil Cyborg 10]

I really want my comets to breed

I know you don't want to go into detail etc but any tips?
Also could you just quickly explain how you looked after the eggs?
How big was that glass you kept them in? (a drinking glass?)

 

[civic07si]

You're little wigglies look adorable!! Your parent fish are gorgeous!! Great job and good luck!!

 

[Kashta]

Even though I wasn't prepared for any of this.. it's real exciting. I can't stop watching them.

I really want my comets to breed

I know you don't want to go into detail etc but any tips?
Also could you just quickly explain how you looked after the eggs?
How big was that glass you kept them in? (a drinking glass?)

I don't mind giving details.. but I seriously caution anyone who might read this that I can't possibly give instructions to go by. So please don't look at my comments as a guideline. This is really a learning experience for me. Maybe after I've done this a few times, I can help someone else by offering advice. I'm just not there yet. I've never done this before and I'm in way over my head with this. The way Sprocket swooped right in and swept Cassandra off her, um, fins... as soon as he got here didn't give me any chance to set anything up or to purchase appropriate breeding supplies ahead of time. There are two excellent threads we have stickied in this forum about goldfish breeding by other members who both have a lot more expertise and real experience. I've been through those to figure out what to expect and anything else I've found has been just using Google.

Yes Cyborg, the glass I'm using is just a regular highball glass I had. I grabbed one of those when I found all the eggs in the tank and used it just to collect them all. I knew I had to get them out of there before the fish and snails started feasting on them. Once I did that, however, I didn't know where else to put them. I couldn't figure out anything else I have on-hand that I could keep clean enough to keep the eggs from turning bad before they hatched. These glasses are about 3-3/4 inches tall and about the same diameter around the fullest part. I also happened to have regular aquatic medicine droppers or whatever those are called that I bought last summer to squirt lemon juice at some aiptaisa I had in a small saltwater tank. The new (unused ones) are what I'm using for this. That lets me siphon up any bits of white fluff or strands I find floating around to keep fungus from taking over. It works to remove empty egg debris I need to keep out of there once they started hatching. I let it fill with water (carefully) inside the glass, then gently squeeze it to use a little water movement to push or roll the eggs around. That lets me see which eggs are empty.. which ones have turned white (fungus) and need to be removed.. where the new babies are.. and so on. Plus, the eggs are naturally sticky. They're supposed to be stuck onto the leaves where they were layed. By removing those from the tank, I've interfered with nature. Well, the drawback to that is.. the eggs have a tendency to stick together now. Letting them clump up would dimish water circulation around them individually.. and that would help fungus take hold. So I move them around a lot.. very gently... to keep them apart. And I use the dropper to transfer newborns from the egg glass to a fry glass, to further reduce waste where the new babies are. I've poured out all the water and replaced it with fresh water from the tank about 3-5 times per day. I've changed glasses twice for clean ones when I thought it was starting to feel slimy inside.

I keep both glasses on top of the big fish tank -- sitting right next to the light fixture atop the center brace. The tank is cycled so I know the water from it is safer for them than anything I'd condition for them out of my tap. It's also oxygenated water which is important because these are too small and too fragile yet to be somewhere that has any current. I figured the tank below would keep them at a somewhat moderate temperature and they get some good ambient light from the fixture behind them. The general curved shape of the glass magnifies what's inside, so I can see them better. And as they've hatched and become more aware of their environment, they seem to be drawn more towards the light than in other directions.

Here's the highball glass sitting on the center brace. Next to that, you can see what the dropper looks like. (The fish tank below has an open top.) The black part in the background is the light fixture, mounted on legs. So they're not "under" the light, they're next to it. The reason you don't see the water's surface from this view is because my air pump went out. I've had to lower the water level so the outflow nozzle and the spray bar (running two separate filters) would keep the water oxygenated until I replace the pump to get bubbles in there again.

From what I've been able to read, the results I'm getting thus far are quite good. Especially, considering I started out with so many eggs. Still, I credit that to the fact that the eggs/fry already know what they're supposed to do. My job here with the eggs is just to keep everything clean and fresh so they get a chance to do their thing.

This is Day 6 now for the eggs and Day 2 since the first fry started to hatch. I've lost count of how many I have in either glass... sorry about that. I tried to keep track.

You can see from the photos I'm attaching that a lot of fry are swimming sideways now instead of darting around at random. On the oldest ones, I can see a little tail forming and some side fins around the gill area. This has given them some vertical stability and they're learning now how to stay in one place and push themselves along to swim. The yolk sacs are gone in the swimmers now. The younger fry still lie around at the bottom of the glass with full yolk sacs.

This picture sort of shows there's a lot of fry still at the bottom of the glass. These are the ones that can't swim yet... or they've just slid down the side of the glass and are resting on the bottom.

This is a photo showing how many unhatched eggs are still left in the other glass. I don't think these are going to hatch.. but who knows. So I keep watching them like I've done with the others before.

Here's my best attempt to get a closer look at some fry. Too blurry.. but they're there.

Other than these.. just more fry photos below. In the first 3 images, the water is clear. The other photos look cloudy because I've just added a little bit of First Bites fry food powder. I don't know if the fry (without yolk sacs) are going to be hungry yet today.. or if they'll start eating tomorrow. I just hope they eat when that time comes. I know this food is going to foul the water now, so their days of living in a small glass with no filtration are over. Their next home is going to be in a breeder net inside a 10-gallon tank. Will, of course, post more photos of that development as I take them.

Thanks, everyone, for all the encouragement!!

 

[Lupin]

Phew! That's a long post with lotsa details, Kashta.

 

[Kashta]

Hee.. I'm long winded, I know. lol.